MEMORANDUM FOR THE ACTING ADMINISTRATOR OF THE AGENCY FORINTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

SUBJECT: AID Family Planning Grants/Mexico City Policy

The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits nongovernmental
organizations ("NGO's") that receive Federal funds from using those
funds "to pay for the performance of abortions as a method of family
planning, or to motivate or coerce any person to practice
abortions." (22 U.S.C. 2151b(f)(1)). The August 1984 announcement
by President Reagan of what has become known as the "Mexico City
Policy" directed the Agency for International Development ("AID") to
expand this limitation and withhold AID funds from NGO's that engage
in a wide range of activities, including providing advice,
counseling, or information regarding abortion, or lobbying a foreign
government to legalize or make abortion available. These conditions
have been imposed even where an NGO uses non-AID funds for
abortion-related activities.

These excessively broad anti-abortion conditions are unwarranted. I
am informed that the conditions are not mandated by the Foreign
Assistance Act or any other law. Moreover, they have undermined
efforts to promote safe and efficacious family planning programs in
foreign nations. Accordingly, I hereby direct that AID remove the
conditions not explicitly mandated by the Foreign Assistance Act or
any other law from all current AID grants to NGO's and exclude them
from future grants.